Bold Ideas

Bold Ideas: Policy Beyond Canada 150

As Canada marks its 150th birthday this year, Canadians have a historic opportunity not only to celebrate a century and a half of accomplishments, but also to look forward to what we can achieve in the future. The Mowat Centre is releasing a series of short written pieces and video interviews that look ahead and present a variety of bold, potentially transformative policy ideas.

Mowat asked a number of thought leaders in Canada and our own researchers what bold steps could be taken to tackle emerging policy issues that Canada will face in coming decades. Should Canada finally adopt a universal pharmacare program? Make our taxes public? Join the EU? Stay tuned as we look beyond the sesquicentennial and explore the bold ideas that could transform Canada over the next 50 years.

You can follow along – and join the conversation – by using the hashtag #boldideas

Rethinking the nation state in the 21st century

The next 50 years will see new global challenges arise – largely driven by technological, demographic and environmental change. We have already begun to see these trends manifest themselves in areas such as cyber-warfare, mass migration and rising rates of poverty and inequality.
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June 8, 2017 |
Mowat Centre
Just like the rest of the world, Canada faces the big challenge to decrease the carbon emissions that result from our energy use. One way to do this is to produce more low-carbon renewable electricity while at the same time rapidly electrifying other sectors, like heating and transportation.Read More

June 7, 2017 |
Mowat Centre
Ted Graham, Head of Open Innovation at General Motors, on CBC's On the Money discussing his Mowat bold idea to embrace disruption in modernizing government policymaking.Read More

June 6, 2017 |
Mowat Centre
In the latest release in Mowat's Bold Ideas series, Ted Graham, Head of Open Innovation at General Motors, calls on Canadian governments to embrace disruption and lessons learned through the sharing economy to modernize the policymaking process.Read More

The case for social and economic rights in the Charter

With all the commotion around the Charter’s 35th birthday this year, you would be forgiven for thinking that human rights in Canada are a fait accompli. You would also be forgiven for, upon reading the words “human rights” just now, thinking first and foremost of the civil and political rights that our constitution explicitly sets out to define and protect. After all, most conversations around rights in Canada revolve around our civil and political liberties.Read More

A Royal Commission on a new amending formula for Canada’s Constitution to fix our fiscal imbalance

An Informal Approach to Effective Regional Governance in Canada

For the last few decades, there has been a growing commentary on Canada’s anachronistic approach to its biggest cities. Over the 150 years of our country’s history, our large cities have become economic, social and cultural engines.Read More

May 15, 2017 |
Mowat Centre
Canadians have always aspired to a kind of open, cosmopolitan citizenship. Wilfrid Laurier said freedom was our nationality. Pierre Trudeau declared himself a citizen of the world.Read More

May 9, 2017 |
Mowat Centre
City of Toronto chief planner and executive director Jennifer Keesmat on CBC TV's On the Money discussing her Mowat Bold Idea on the future of governance and finance in major Canadian cities.Read More

May 9, 2017 |
Mowat Centre
Cities should represent progress. More than half of the global population now lives in cities and, according to the World Health Organization, this number continues to climb by 60 million people a year. The urbanization of our world should be a sign of our evolution as a species. But is it?Read More

A Prescription for Canada's 150th

In 1957, Canada was just ten years shy of celebrating its centennial—still an adolescent nation, wrangling with domestic soul-searching and trying to carve out a name for itself in the international community. That year would see government pass the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act.Read More